Using Videos Effectively: 3 Practical Tips

Video marketing has been increasingly important but often stated as a tool with high investment costs and low ROI. The reality could not be further from the truth. Here’s why:

Video can be a kick boost to your current marketing efforts. It builds a significant amount of trust; it is more engaging than any other platform, and it has a long-tail effect on your SEO and brand recognition compared nothing else. While it has a high investment cost compared to other content marketing options, it has the potential to generate improved ROI if it’s done right. We are here to help you with the groundwork on where to put your videos, how to create them cost-effectively and explain to you the benefits that you should look for when starting a video marketing campaign.

Why and Where You Need to Do Video Marketing

YouTube should be your basecamp platform on video marketing

YouTube’s popularity and ties with Google are not just the only reasons you need to produce videos, especially to YouTube. While Facebook and other social platforms have video capabilities and are getting more and more popular, they are highly relying on their very own “feed”. Once the community stops seeing the feed, the video ranks lower, and there’s little or to no organic growth in views. Meanwhile, YouTube’s recommendation-based system drives internal organic growth on the channel. YouTube is the clear winner on the long-tail effect in video, and their content is easily embeddable to any other platform.

SEO benefits are above anything

If your customers don’t trust you, they won’t buy from you. A well-written review? How about a video demonstration or a how-to-use-it video? Which builds more trust, a live video demo or a long written text? There is no easier and consumable form of content than video. Videos also need more effort to create than any other form of content so it shows enthusiasm and dedication. It is also more shareable than any other form of content.

Video has higher retention and conversions

According to studies, 65% of video viewers watch ¾ of the videos, which cannot be said for those long text articles. Getting a message across to your audience cannot be easier through video. Video can drive higher conversions as well: email campaigns with embedded videos drive higher CTR than any other email campaigns. Video also drives seriously higher conversions in terms of leads than any other platforms.

Creating a video marketing campaign

Using text-to-video tools has never been easier

You don’t have the setup for a full-on video marketing plan in terms of infrastructure and team? Don’t worry, there are solutions for that. Tools like Vidooya or Animoto are helping with the process with text-to-video or simplified video templates. Though originally produced content will always over-perform templates, it is an excellent way to add some new features to your campaign and experiment with video storytelling before you jump on this wagon.

Encourage sharing, add thumbnails and understand the ecosystem

YouTube is simple to understand. When you create call-to-action sections in your content marketing campaigns, do the same in video but now with your own words and play. Just state to users to share your video and subscribe to your channel or put out a single thumbnail to create click-through to your site from the video. Video marketing is super straight-forward. Understand that YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google so naming, tagging and describing your video content via text is super important. Apart from practical options, YouTube also ranks the videos based on how long the videos encourage people to stay on the YouTube platform. The longer users watch your video – the better the search rankings you’ll have. Understand that YouTube has a long-term effect, users can subscribe to your channel. Encouraging users to subscribing to your channel is crucial.

Telling your story in a video

An excellent text-based article has an easy-to-follow structure. So does a video which has a superb storyboard. Sketch it up before you proceed and test the flow of your videos with some draft versions. Create value for your target group and tell your story visually. Experiment with the length of your videos and don’t be afraid to try out new forms of video content ideas live. Also, consider video as a channel where you not just engage with users but also convince them to visit your site.

Measuring your success

Metrics that you need to watch out to determine your video success

Video views

This is the most important metrics you need to track. Views can help you to determine how strong your content and topic is. It also helps you determines your most popular videos and the type of videos well-received by your audience.

Likes and dislikes

This is less important, but it is a good indicator how users receive your content. Obviously, you need to get a more positive vibe for each video you produce.

Watch time

This is not just important because you have a clue how much time users spent on your videos watching, but it also affects your YouTube search rankings.

Engagement metrics

Likes, shares, comments and favourites to your videos. All are critical and provide you with a basic idea on how your videos received by your users.

To recap, video is an engaging content format that may seem daunting to create but will prove rewarding on the long-term. It drives more leads, conversions and gets you more out from SEO than any other content platforms.